The Recording Industry Association says it has won its first music piracy case before the Copyright Tribunal under a controversial law, with the offender being fined $616.RIANZ - an organisation which represents record labels and musicians - said today a claim it brought to the tribunal was upheld, in a decision that is the first of its kind under 2011 changes to copyright laws.

The amendment to the law allows rights holders - such as movie studios or music companies - to issue warning notices to users believed to be illegally downloading copyrighted content.

After a third notice, rights holders can bring a case before the tribunal, which can fine an offender up to $15,000.

In a statement, RIANZ said today it was pleased the tribunal had "upheld laws protecting the rights of artists" and via email a spokesperson said the exact penalty dished out to the offender was $616.57.

"However, as you'll note, it's not about the money for RIANZ, it's about making a point that illegal file sharing is not okay and that if you do it and are caught you can expect to face a fine," a spokesperson said.

RIANZ said there are 11 further cases still live before the Tribunal.

The recording industry body would not release the tribunal's full decision and the Herald has made a request to the Ministry of Justice for this.

Hmm. Back when this law was first announced, I thought I'd read that they could only push for actual damages. I would've thought that the actual damages for one song would be $2.39 (cost of buying from iTunes) [Edit: Or maybe the RRP of the album] plus whatever the filing fees are ($75?).

Come to think of it, since it's a "three strikes" law, wouldn't it by definition be a fine for at least three songs? [... which you've noted in your edit]

Behodar: I thought I'd read that they could only push for actual damages. I would've thought that the actual damages for one song would be $2.39 (cost of buying from iTunes) [Edit: Or maybe the RRP of the album] plus whatever the filing fees are ($75?).

They could have been seeding thou, so they might have gone after them for the number of copies leached from them.....

"However, as you'll note, it's not about the money for RIANZ, it's about making a point that illegal file sharing is not okay and that if you do it and are caught you can expect to face a fine," a spokesperson said." They can say that with a straight face, of course it's to do with the money.

interesting because in the usa you cant prosecute just on the isp address, they have tried but the courts wont accept it without proof of the actual name of the person who downloaded it , for the simple reason that you cant tell who downloaded it.

The defendant acknowledged downloading the first song but without knowing it was from an unlicensed source. She says the download of the first song caused a a bit torrent client to be installed automatically. She was unaware of the download of the second song.

She was noticed for downloading the first song twice. She is not sure how that occurred since she believed she had downloaded it only once. Then the third strike was a completely different song.

Looking at the breakdown of costs is interesting. She was ordered to pay damages of $6.57 (the retail costs of buying the songs off iTunes), RIANZ's direct costs ($50 to Telecom for sending her notices, plus $200 for tribunal filing fees), plus statutory damages of $360.

Personally, I'm interested in the fact that they are able to claim filing fees, whereas if we needed to take them to a tribunal or small claims, we would not be able to claim those filing fees. What's good for the goose and all that...

I'm going to guess this is going to get a lot of international attention based on the comparatively pitifully small sums awarded compared to overseas cases (especially the US). I'm also going to guess that with the line "on the basis of the information available to it, however, together with the statutory presumption that each incidence of file sharing identified in an infringement notice constitutes an infringement of the rights owner's copyright in the work" there's going to be a renewed push against the "guilty on accusation" clauses.

The $360 is specifically a made up on the spot "deterrent" and not statutory damages at all. One of the factors the tribunal claims is:

[30] "The fact that the account holder had BitTorrent protocol (uTorrent version 2.2.0) software installed on her computer. It notes that the locating, downloading, installing and configuring of such software is a deliberate act and does not occur without direct action on behalf of a computer user"

As an indictment of intent to continue infringing that looks very shaky to me. She said it was installed automatically. If correct then there was no direct action on her part. Also if she was going to seek out uTorrent you would think she would have got the latest version.

Is anyone here aware of sites that offer song downloads and effectively wrap the install of a uTorrent client or uses uTorrent wrapped up as part of a different product?